Andrea Barnet - All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930

Actress Aileen Dresser and two revelers. Photo by Jessie Tarbox Beals.

THE WOMEN OF BOHEMIAN GREENWICH VILLAGE AND HARLEM 19131930

Andrea Barnet

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2004

Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

2004 by Andrea Barnet. All rights reserved.
First published in German translation under the title Crazy New York: Die Frauen von Harlem und Greenwich Village, edition ebersbach, Berlin, 2001.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for a previous edition of this work.

Originally published: Crazy New York. Berlin : Edition Ebersbach, 2001.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN 9781565127029

Jacket design: Anne Winslow
Front cover photographs (clockwise from top left): Mina Loy (Stephen Haweis, courtesy of Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University [Stephen Haweis Papers]); Jane Heap (Berenice Abbott, Commerce Graphics Ltd., Inc.); Bessie Smith (Frank Driggs, courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Print Division, the New York Public Library); Alberta Hunter (Frank Driggs, Schomburg); Mabel Dodge (Berenice Abbott, Commerce Graphics, Ltd., Inc.); Ethel Waters (Frank Driggs, Schomburg); Edna St. Vincent Millay (Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries); Fania Marinoff (Nicholas Muray, Vanity Fair, July 1922); Mina Loy and Djuna Barnes (Man Ray, Man Ray Trust, Paris/VG BildKunst, Bonn |Princeton|)

For Kit, who makes everything possible, and Philippa, who keeps me smiling. And to Lily Brett, for the gift of this book.

Beauty for the eye, satire for the mind, depravity for the senses! Of such is the new kingdom of art. Amen.
Dame Rogue (Louise Norton), 1915

Partygoers dressed for a Greenwich Village artists ball. Photo by Jessie Tarbox Beals.

No book is a solo endeavor. I owe enormous thanks to a great many people for their contributions to this one. I am deeply indebted to my writer friends Barbara Wright and Sheran James, who each provided close readings and sensitive editorial advice at crucial junctures, and to my original German publisher, Brigitte Ebersbach, whose enthusiasm and belief in the project spurred me on, as well as to her hard-working assistants Anett Schwarz and Ilka Litzke.

Thanks also to Kurt Andersen and Jonathan Galassi for their generous readings of the manuscript and publishing advice; to my agent Jennifer Lyons, who gave up far too many hours during her pregnancy leave to complete the contract; and to Maria Campbell, for her wise counsel in leading me to Jennifer.

Special thanks are due to Elisabeth Scharlatt, my publisher, for her savvy, her enthusiasm, and her in-depth knowledge of the period; my editor, Andra Olenik, for her perceptive reading and smart editorial suggestions; to Constance Sayre, for her unforgettable help at the Frankfurt book fair; and to Paul Chaleff, for introducing me to Constance. Grateful thanks also to Roger L. Conover for permission to use photographs from his private collection and to quote from Mina Loys published work and to Carolyn Burke and Francis M. Naumann for permission to use photographs from their private collections. I am indebted to Bonnie Yochelson for invaluable help in securing permissions for Berenice Abbott photographs; to Deb Futter and Bill Cohan for their generosity in giving me a summer writing space when I had none; to Steven Hoffman and Howard Watler for their time and expertise in helping me with photographs; to Kim Sloane, Michael Anderson, and Geoff Young for sharing several difficult-to-find, out-of-print books from their libraries; to Adam Van Doren for an article by his great-uncle Carl Van Doren, which I hadnt known existed; and to John Coston for an article by Ethel Waters.

Thanks are also due to Barbara Ensor, Lili Francklyn, Kim Springer, Barbara Fey, James Barnet, and my daughter, Pippa White, for sympathetic readings of individual chapters; Bill Strong for copyright advice; Heidi Cunnick for generously arranging my first reading; Bill Pangburn for expert German translation skills, Jill Choder for wise coaching, Caroline Stewart for flowers at a critical moment; and Eliza Hicks for her time and generosity in taking photographs. Finally, I remain forever grateful to my husband, Kit White, for his extraordinary patience and unflagging emotional support, for readings far beyond the call of duty, and for gourmet cooking that never stopped.

I would also like to acknowledge the many generous museum and library curators who shared their time and expertise during my search for photographs, and provided inestimable help with photographic reproductions and permissions. Special thanks to Margarite Lavin at the Museum of the City of New York; Marie-Helene Gold, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute; Dean Rogers, Special Collections, Vassar College; Margaret M. Sherry and Annalee Pauls, Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library; Ben Primer, Harvey S. Firestone Library, Princeton University; Matt Wiegle, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; Geraldine Aramanda, The Menil Collection, Houston; Christine Maass, Special Collections, Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Bruce Kellner, trustee to the Estate of Carl Van Vechten; Evanne Gargiulo, Commerce Graphics; Jane Siegel and Dr. Jean Ashton, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; Beth Alverez, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries; Stacey Bomento, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Julie Zeptel, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Though I have made every effort to trace copyright holders, I would be most grateful to hear from any who have been missed.

Alberta Hunter. Photo by Frank Driggs, 1934.

Berenice Abbott (18981991) A photographer who took portraits of many of the female modernists and who began her career as Man Rays studio assistant. In the 1930s, she made her name taking pictures of a now vanished New York.

Margaret Anderson (18861973) Founder and editor of the avant-garde magazine the Little Review. The companion of Jane Heap and a resident of Greenwich Village from 1916 to 1922.

Louise Arensberg (18791953) Salon hostess. Patron of modern art and the wife of Walter Arensberg.

Djuna Barnes (18921984) A journalist known for her arch cultural commentary. She also wrote sardonic poetry, dreamlike plays, short stories, and several novels with lesbian themes. Her experimental novel Nightwood is an underground classic.

Mabel Dodge (18791962) Fabulously wealthy, her fabled salon on lower Fifth Avenue was the social hub of early Greenwich Village. She was an early convert to psychoanalysis, a pioneer in free love, one of the impresarios of the scandalous 1913 Armory Show, the first international exhibition of modern art in America, and a generous patron of the arts.